The Fall of the Entitled.

The summer has belonged to baseball since the Yard’s first sports inhalation. Baseball is rich with tradition, history and heroes and a comfort place for the Yard. It is the Campbell Soup and grilled cheese sandwich in the kitchen of those summers. Football was the torture that was the Los Angeles Rams. The Lakers of that era were a distress that was never fully diagnosed. Apparently, soccer was not even founded at the time. The Dodgers delivered and were the kings of our summers. We played their game, we followed their lead, we read about it and we breathed it throughout our summers and hopefully into the fall.

In 2010, Dodger baseball has morphed into the Days of our Lives with all of the tawdry story lines and phony characters. The Dodgers are struggling for relevance in the hunt for the playoffs. The Giants are relevant for the first time in years. The Padres and Phillies are the new Yard favorites. The McCourt’s are the black hole that is collapsing the Dodgers into the swirling vortex of their false sense of entitlement that will burst in the next two weeks. Los Angeles has bigger problems than the McCourt’s but they are a local issue that threatens the vestiges of our summer traditions. They do not deserve such control and we do not deserve them.

The Yard has painful experience with California divorce law. When two angry combatants start swinging for the fences with their well paid attorneys, only the attorneys score. We never thought Frank and Jamie were part of this city. Frank McCourt claiming that he is the sole owner of the Dodgers shows how little he understands about California. Frank is claiming that he has no money to Jamie’s attorneys but is claiming to the fans he has plenty of money to make the team competitive. In Los Angeles Superior Courts, Frank McCourt would have a better chance attempting to get acquitted of a double homicide than trying to claim the Dodgers are his sole property.

As the postseason approaches, the best stories in baseball are the Reds and the Padres. The Giants would be a good story if we did not hate them but we do. Cincinnati Red Johnny Votto, whoever he is and wherever he came from, is having a Triple Crown season. We are pulling for him to make it happen. It would be the first Triple Crown in baseball since Boston’s Carl Yastremski in 1967. Frank Robinson did it in 1966 for Orioles. Yard youth figured it happened every year since it happened the first two years we followed baseball.

The Padres were picked last in the NL west and in early September they have the best record in all of the NL. The pitching staff is for real and Bud Black is the manager of the year. Baseball is starting to take notice even if the locals are still not attending many of the games at Petco. If the Dodgers were having that kind of year, four million people would be already through the gates but the Padres have struggled to find 1.2 million to come to that fun stadium to watch that interesting team.

Commissioner Bud Selig got a statue in Milwaukee last week. We hope pigeons christen it appropriately. Bud has taken a lot of credit for cleaning up a steroid issue he benefitted from and helped create. He is saluted for creating a salary structure that makes money for teams that will never win a title including his Brewers. The Yankees print money with his blessing and pass it to the Pirates who have not had a winning season in two decades, were out the pennant race by Memorial Day and made $29 million last year mostly from the money the Yanks sent them. Bud makes $20 million a year as the worst commissioner in professional sports. He took a job no one wanted because he owned a team no one watched. He feels he is entitled to his millions. We hope the pigeons christen him as well.

College football is coming sooner this year because the Dodgers suck and USC is on probation. UCLA is not much better than they have been but we like Ricky the Nue’s moxie. He is more fun than Karl the Dull but the results are unfortunately similar. UCLA still has to find the QB they have not had since Cade McNown rose up out of nowhere to gun sling the Bruins to four straight over USC. Who knew that would be his and our finest hours of the past decade?

The radio promoting the Lane Kiffin era are hilarious. Young Lane has an era? He spent 18 months coaching the Raiders and one season in Tennessee. Were those eras? We do hope Lane Kiffin can last as long as Larry Smith or Paul Hackett. He does seem to possess the same misguided bravado that plagued their USC tenure’s and lead the Trojans to their decades long struggles of the late 80’s and 90’s. The NCAA did not lead USC down this path, their arrogance did. Reggie might have been taking money but so were others. Reggie was the one that got caught.

Pat Haden is not going to be around that long at USC. He makes too much money and has too much going on outside of USC to stay very long. He is loyal and came to the rescue to clean up the mess Pete Carroll left behind and Mike Garrett mishandled. He will announce he is looking for a successor right before he replaces Lane Kiffin with Steve Sarkissian in the next few years.